Where Were You When…
Some moments fade into the background, but others carve themselves into our memory. They’re the “where were you when” kind of moments — the ones you can picture years later, down to the chair you sat in or the sound in the room.
I remember being at my son’s baseball game in the summer of 2009. I was sitting in a blue folding chair when someone said Michael Jackson had died. I really liked MJ when I was younger, but at that time I wasn’t a huge fan. Still, the way that moment froze in place has never left me.
I was only eleven when the Challenger exploded. My tiny elementary school went still, teachers whispering in the hallways. I can’t recall all the details, but I remember the hush — the way even as a child I knew something big and terrible had happened.
And then there’s September 11, 2001. That memory lives sharper than most. I was living in a town of about a hundred people and had just come home from the post office. My brother had joined the Navy the year before, and ever since the attack on the USS Cole, I’d been glued to CNN trying to keep track of where he was. He was serving on the Crash & Salvage team aboard the USS Kearsarge, so if something happened, he would be right in the middle of it.
When I saw the first plane hit the tower, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The whole world shifted, and my first thought was of him. With communication cut off, I had no way to know if he was safe. Out of instinct, I popped a blank VCR tape into the machine and started recording the coverage. I thought, he’ll want to see this someday from the outside — what the rest of us saw, while he was living it from the inside. At the time I didn’t realize those images would be replayed endlessly for decades.
My dad was sleeping after his night shift, my mom lived in another town and didn’t follow the news, and my nine-year-old son was at school. So it was just me, the television, and my worried thoughts. I didn’t personally know anyone in New York or at the Pentagon or on that plane in Pennsylvania, but my heart ached for every family who lost someone. That day left its mark on all of us.
Not every “where were you when” moment comes from tragedy, though. Some are pure joy — the kind that change your life in an instant. I’ll never forget standing in my driveway, sick with Covid, when my son and his wife handed me a small box. Inside was a tiny white onesie with baby footprints and the words coming soon. I cried right there in the driveway, unable to hug anyone but overflowing with excitement. For months I thought I’d be “Grammy,” like a trophy. But now my grandson is three and a half and calls me Mimi — and I wouldn’t trade that name for anything.
Some memories belong to the whole world. Others belong only to us. But both kinds stick because they remind us of who we are, who we love, and how life can change in a single moment.
